President-elect Donald Trump has said he will appoint Kash Patel, a loyalist and hardline critic of the “deep state”, to lead the FBI, signalling he will seek to remove Christopher Wray as head of the agency.
Patel, who advised the secretary of defence under Trump’s previous administration, has suggested carving out the FBI’s intelligence-gathering function and purging its ranks of employees who do not support Trump. He has also mused about retribution against Trump’s critics.
“I am proud to announce that Kashyap ‘Kash’ Patel will serve as the next Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Trump wrote on his social media website, Truth Social, on Saturday night.